


Gryffindor

by canary



Series: Houses [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9575081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canary/pseuds/canary
Summary: Scorpius Malfoy finally decides why the Sorting Hat put him in Gryffindor.





	1. Chapter 1

The Tube station was decorated in grungy white tile and empty crisps bags. Scorpius looked up the stairs—concrete, with metal caps on each riser—and carefully began to climb them. London had frozen the night before and barely thawed during the day. It was an unseasonable November, so far characterized by sleet and hundred-year low temperatures. It was worse at Malfoy Manor with nothing to break the relentless grasping of the wind, which was but one of the reasons Scorpius had been staying in London as much as he could. So far it had been educational. He’d long been fond of Muggles in an anthropological way, and now he could actualize three years of Muggle Studies: pounds, shillings, black cabs and pedestrian crossing lights. He wished he could have an iPod for his long walks, but the two he’d bought so far had fizzled out near his wand.

Outside the Tube station, the wind punched into him and reached fingers into every gap and seam of his coat. He muttered a spell to seal them back up, and exhaled in relief when his body started to hold its heat. He put his head down and walked for a block into the wind, then turned right and went down two more. It was a busy neighborhood—even the cold couldn’t keep an early bar crowd off the street, and he passed pubs, bars, upscale eateries displaying heavy white tablecloths through gold-lit windows. Still, it had edges: grated-off storefronts, graffiti tags on the lampposts.

It was exactly the kind of neighborhood that James Potter would want to live in.

Scorpius counted down the numbers on the buildings. 871, 875, 877, and then the peeling white brick of James’s building, 881. It was the third or fourth time he’d walked past it. The first time had been accidental, at least mostly; he had no excuse for the other three. Except that after a year and half, he still missed James. He still regretted the way things had ended, still wondered why he’d been so afraid, why all of his worst decisions were motivated by fear and why they had all seemed so unavoidable at the time. Regret was not an emotion that Scorpius Malfoy had lived with much. Less pleasant was the knowledge that he was a coward, no better than his father or his grandparents Malfoy; he’d just been born into a luckier time, when cowardice wasn’t a life or death matter.

Also he was the worst Gryffindor in the history of the world.

Today, the green-painted front door of 881 Heath Court was propped open with a brick. He could see gritty beige carpet through the crack in the door, a staircase rising towards a brass chandelier with half of its lights burned out. Carefully, not letting himself think about it too much, Scorpius pushed the door the rest of the way open and slipped inside. James lived in 2C, up a floor. He’d learned that from an envelope that Al had left lying on his desk a few weeks ago, when Scorpius had been over for after-work takeout curry.

Up the stairs. They squeaked, which was no surprise. Then he was on the second floor. He could see light under 2C’s door.

 _You can leave right now_ , he heard himself think. Then, _No_.

He knocked on the door. His stomach did a sick flip when the knob turned, which was fifty times better than what it did when the noise of a party in full swing flowed out of the door. A Muggle girl with dark hair in a messy bun, who was attractive in spite of the fact that she was wearing overalls and appalling white platform shoes, propped herself in the doorframe.

“’Lo,” she said, not seeming exactly unfriendly but not giving his gray trousers or immaculate navy coat any credit, either.

They stared at each other until Ira popped up. He still had impeccable timing, two years later, but even he couldn’t hide the surprised look on his face.

“It’s been a while,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”

“Er,” responded Scorpius. But then somehow Ira was sheepdogging him inside, introducing him as an old friend to the brunette in overalls, asking him about work in Muggle-friendly language. Ira so snowed him under with kindness that when he asked if Scorpius was there to see James, he could only nod, overwhelmed.

“I’ll go let him know you’re here,” Ira declared, and vanished.

In the meantime, the brunette handed him a beer in a glass bottle. Her name was Elise. She was an arts student, she said with a sort of interrogative lift, as if daring him to comment with his straight-from-work clothes and classic shoes. Instead, he asked what kind of art she did, and they made 55 seconds of awkward conversation on her upcoming mixed-media show, before she said she had to go to the bathroom and vanished down a hall. No one else from the party was interested in talking to him. They seemed to be a Muggle crowd, university and art-student types in faded black jeans, hazed over with alcohol and weed. Al had mentioned that James was mostly hanging out with Muggles, outside of the Aurors and his family; here they were.

James had not yet made his appearance. Scorpius began to wonder what he’d do if James didn’t show, or wasn’t willing to keep up the social pretext of being old schoolmates. Probably Scorpius could immolate himself on the spot; possibly he could make it out the front door first, but from the sickening flips his stomach was doing behind his navel, he might want to put himself out of his misery faster. How was his luck so bad that there was a party? That the first time he would speak to James in two years—if James was willing to speak to him at all—was in front of a crowd of very blasted, yet very hip other people? Scorpius could give himself credit for a lot of things (unrelated to James Potter), but being _hip_ was not one of them.

And then James was there. He appeared out of a back hallway, hair a mess, the collar of his green plaid button-down turned up halfway. His face didn’t have any particular expression at all. He was trailed by a pouty-looking blonde similarly _en deshabille_ , who was remonstrating with the back of his head while scraping her model-wavy hair into a ponytail.

Scorpius’s initial reaction was not fit to print.

His second was to leave. It had been a mistake to come here in the first place. Who was he to walk back into James’s life unannounced, when he’d been the one to leave it in the first place? How had he been thinking this little errand would end, in the ends of seconds he’d allowed himself to consider?

James caught his eyes across the room. Scorpius ducked out the door, trying not to put names to the emotions he’d seen in them.

He was halfway down the stairs when James caught his arm. “Can you bloody _wait_ a minute?”

“I,” said Scorpius. “I—yes. I can wait.”

He took in James’s appearance. He’d grabbed a coat from somewhere and had it halfway on, the empty arm hanging awkwardly down his back. His boot laces were flopping around his ankles.

“ _Okay_ ,” James said with emphasis, as if he’d been expecting more of a fight. Given their history, he probably was, because Scorpius had never gotten any better at standing his ground. It seemed like in the last four months they’d been together, he had been constantly in flight, trying to leave James by inches before James could leave him all the way; and to his credit James had given chase, tried to pin him down, but it had never worked for more than a week or two.

Of course, that had been almost two years ago. He was giving himself too much credit.

“So?” Scorpius asked, not sure where to take it from where they were: standing halfway down James’s stairwell, staring at each other and thinking about—whatever each of them was thinking about.

“I would of thought you’d had a plan,” James said with what was almost a smile. “Barging in the way you did.”

“Well, I didn’t. I just—I was wondering how you were,” he finished lamely.

James looked back up the stairs at the party, at his blonde. “Sod them,” he said. “There’s a quiet pub ‘round the corner, fancy a drink?”

 

 

And then they were sitting at a high-top in James’s local, a murky hole called the Stag and Arms. James ordered two lagers and two shots of whiskey. And then they stared at each other until James shook his head, like a dog shaking off water, and downed half his lager. For courage, perhaps, because then he asked, “How have you been?” as if they were going to sit here and make normal conversation. Scorpius was reminded of their accidental first date, that Valentine’s at the Hog’s Head. The pub wasn’t even dissimilar, except that the pictures were stationary underneath their layers of soot and the bartender was seventy years younger.

“I’m in the Experimental Charms lab at the Ministry for now,” he said in response.

“How’s that?” James asked, leaning back in his chair.

Scorpius shrugged. “It’s fine. Interesting enough on some days.” Honestly, it was a bore—he’d spent the last three weeks working on the wand flick for a charm to clean gutters. It was hardly the stuff of dreams. He thought the Committee were a bunch of backwards-looking luddites; “experimental” in their parlance seemed to primarily mean, “small adjustments to things that have already existed for six centuries.” They were doing really interesting thing over in Potions, but Ludmila Loontwhipple, the witch in charge of charms, seemed to think that experimentation led directly to the Dark Arts.

“You must be calcifying.” James was smirking at him and Scorpius felt himself smile back. “You only say _fine_ that way about things if they’re awful. And I’ve heard Dad say that Loontwhipple is a bit of a hag.”

“Yeah, well, it’s my first job. We can’t all be Aurors out saving the world.”

James snorted. “Do you even know how much _paperwork_ I do? You’d bloody love it.”

They talked about work for a while longer, James telling him funny stories about the calls he’d been on—demented dustbins in Surrey, a rash of cursed kitchen sinks in the West End, one of which had eaten his partner’s wand and then transfigured itself into a tea cozy.

“It keeps me busy,” James concluded. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, halfway blocking the space between their table and its neighbors. “How are things with the family? I think I heard Al say you’re living out at the Manor.”

It was both touching, to know that James paid attention when Al mentioned him, and uncomfortable for James to know that Scorpius lived with his father. James had made it clear he had no time and less patience for Scorpius’s continued relationship with his family, but he couldn’t have just walked away from them all, much as he’d wanted to towards the end of school. There were too many years of history there.

“For now,” he answered noncommittally. “I looked for a place when I started the new job but I couldn’t find anything that worked.” What had actually happened was that he’d flatly refused to live in the Malfoy apartments at the nicer end of Knockturn Alley—something had _happened_ in them during the war, even worse than in the Manor. Even his father wouldn’t stay there for more than a night before making a white-lipped retreat back to the Manor. But it wouldn’t do for Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy to let a room like a commoner, and he didn’t have enough money yet to cut the purse strings. “I’m saving now.”

“Ooh, saving your knuts like the rest of us?” James asked with a wicked grin. “Tell me, Lord Malfoy, how _are_ you managing?”

“Shove off,” Scorpius responded, kicking James’s chair. He didn’t know how many times he’d responded to James like that during their years together, he realized, and he saw James realizing it too: his eyes darkened for a second, and he almost frowned.

“Well,” James said after a few more minutes of almost-easy repartee, “I should be getting back.”

“To that blonde girl?” It was out before he could stop himself, and he barely kept himself from clapping a hand over his traitor of a mouth.

James paused, chewing on his lower lip. That was a new habit. He said slowly, “My thing with the blonde girl isn’t going anywhere. But you don’t have any right to ask about that.”

“I know,” Scorpius got out, looking down at his white-knuckled hands clamped together under the table. He was dimly aware of James getting up to pay the tab, sliding his way through the growing crowd and then slipping his coat back on. This had been—nice, and he’d ruined it.

He followed James back outside, and then to the corner where James would turn. He didn’t know what to say but he felt like he needed to say something.

“I,” he said to the side of James’s face, but mostly to the cold night wind. His voice cracked on the one syllable. He coughed and tried again. “I want you to know that I really—regret how things ended. How I ended things,” he made himself add, because it was the truth.

“Yeah?” James answered. “Well—”

There was a long pause. Scorpius regarded the tips of his shoes, which were right at the edge of an ice-rimed puddle. Cautiously he edged his foot away, and then he dared to glance up: James was chewing his lip again, staring at him with the look in his eyes that meant he was feeling vulnerable. Vulnerable was not a word that people associated with James Potter, even now that he was semi-reformed,  holding down a respectable job with the Aurors and no longer shoving innocents down the stairs. Some of his hair had fallen over his forehead, black in the uneven lamplight, and Scorpius had the mad urge to push it back—but then there was a hullabaloo from behind them, and the moment was broken.

“Where have you been?” the blonde girl from the party asked, twining her arm around James’s waist and throwing a pouty look up at him. She was exactly the right height to fit under his chin and had a red, bow-shaped mouth. The rest of the crew from the apartment straggled around them, making a lot of noise the way drunken, festive people did.

“Catching up with a friend,” James said, looking down at her. He might have said it was going nowhere with her, but there was affection in his voice. He didn’t remove her arm, either. The sight of it was making things catch fire in Scorpius’s insides, much like the time he’d gotten paired with Norman for their O.W.L. exam in Potions and Norman had forgot to put the lionfish spine in his undetectable poison antidote. That time Professor Goldstein had swooped in with the remedy; this time there was no cure waiting in the wings.

“I’ve got to be going,” Scorpius blurted out, and turned to go.

“Hang on a second,” James said. “I—” and then he stopped again. “I’ll see you around,” he finished.

“Sure.” Scorpius stood and watched them go, James and his blonde getting swept up into their rowdy, happy crowd.

 

 

He Apparated back to Malfoy Manor, appearing on the wide flags by the side doors. He shut his eyes for a few moments, taking deep breaths to calm the roiling of his stomach—ever since the first time he’d Side-Alonged, into the gardens not a stone’s throw from where he was standing now, Apparating had made him want to vomit. So usually he used the Floo network or Muggle public transportation (which had the added benefit of infuriating his father), but tonight he hadn’t had the patience to take the Tube back to the Ministry so he could use the hearths there.

He strolled up to the doors, which opened without a touch. The parlor was empty, although a few candelabra politely flickered on as soon as they realized someone was there. Lights continued to follow him down the corridors, letting him walk in a pool of light until he’d gone from satin wallpaper and marble busts to a hall that was decidedly more utilitarian. There was only a threadbare green runner, and the walls were painted an unassuming gray. The kitchen was at the far end, as far away from the receiving salons and ballrooms as was physically possible. In a building the size of Malfoy Manor, that was quite far indeed—his forebears hadn’t wanted to insult their guests by allowing them to see anything as prosaic as a house elf peeling potatoes.

That was, in fact, what Dinkle and Marigold were doing when he pushed open the doors to the kitchen. They looked up as one and bowed as one, dropping their peelers onto the scarred work table that ran the length of the room.

“We’ve saved some shepherd’s pie for Master Scorpius,” Marigold squeaked. She hopped down from her bench and scurried over to the great ovens covering the kitchen’s back wall.

“Thanks,” he said. She assembled a tray, then gestured him out of the kitchen. The Malfoy Manor house-elves shared the opinion of the older—well, all of the other, except for Scorpius’s generation of one—Malfoys that elves should neither be seen, nor heard. He missed Twinky awfully, but she had died during his seventh year at Hogwarts, snapping his last concrete tie to Italy; she had never liked England anyway, with its cold, relentless rains. Dinkle and Marigold would prefer that he never set foot in the kitchen to begin with, but he liked seeing some normalcy amongst the icy marble and somber portraits of Malfoy Manor. Besides, it reminded him of Hogwarts. He felt the same sense of surreptitiousness going to the Manor’s kitchens as he had in visiting Hogwarts’ with Norman or Al, even though it wasn’t technically forbidden.

The tray followed him up to his room. It was the same as it had always been—blue watered-silk wallpaper, the giant bed that had seemed to swallow him whole as a ten-year-old. He appreciated its dimensions at nineteen years and six feet; James had as well, on the handful of memorable occasions Scorpius had smuggled him in. He had topped out at six two, so twin beds had become unworkable except in the direst circumstances. Scorpius’s missing two inches had been a constant source of frustration from ages fifteen to seventeen, when he’d finally had to admit that he just wasn’t going to catch up.

He mechanically chewed his way through the shepherd’s pie while he skimmed through his mail, which Dinkle had left on a silver salver on his desk. There were four letters: a circular from the Committee on Experimental Charms, as if he didn’t get enough updates on gutter-cleaning charms at work; two invitations to charity parties, both on stiff, expensive parchment bordered in metallic leaf; and one that was considerably thicker, grubbier, and with untidier handwriting. The return address was for Norman Barnabas, Apartment 68, 1118 Warlock Warrington Whitebeard Way, Wizarding District II, Las Vegas, Nevada  ZZ3X70. Scorpius tossed it on his bed to read later. Everything else went in the fireplace after the most cursory of glances.

_Dear Scorpius,_

_Still loving LV! Still can’t believe I was mental enough to follow Amanda here, but we both know there wasn’t much in England for me. Her work with the Muggle-Magical Anti-Cheating Alliance is still good. Think she’ll be up for a promotion soon._

_I’ve started working on a comic that I’m calling True Adventures of a Crime-Fighting Witch. Don’t tell Amanda or anyone else, but it’s based on her. That Muggle comic shop where I work has a drawing group and everyone seems to like my comics so far. It’s excellent, I can just use all of the stuff from the real wizarding world and they think I’m so creative! There’s a comic book convention coming up soon, they all say I should take it there and try to talk to some publishers._

_Hope everything is well in rainy old England! I’m writing this from next to a pool, wearing swimming trunks. I would imagine you’re wearing layers and whining about the cold. Come visit any time._

_xx Norman_

 

Scorpius set Norman’s letter down on the side table. He was glad to hear that things were going so well for him. Who would have thought that Norman, of all people, would be the closest to a stable, happy life a year after finishing at Hogwarts? Not Scorpius, although Norman would certainly not have hesitated to tell him it was because he was a selfish, short-sighted arse.

 

 

The next week passed at a glacial pace. Even days later, Scorpius couldn’t figure out whether going to see James had been a good idea. He hadn’t had much equilibrium to begin with, but seeing James had disturbed what little he had—everything reminded him of James, from his own bed (that James had been in _three times_ )  to sitting at his desk in the lab (James’s voice: “Really, Scorpius? You cannot seriously think this is _interesting_?” from when he’d been helping James study for his Charms N.E.W.T.; but he _had_ seriously thought memory charms were interesting).

“Wouldn’t it be easier to charm the gutters so they don’t clog in the first place?” he asked his nearest neighbor, a middle-aged witch named Walpurga Hopkirk, in desperation that Friday.

“It’s never worked before,” she said. “Ludmila says they’re Uncharmable.” Uncharmable was the Charms equivalent of Incurable.

“Has Ludmila _tried_?”

Walpurga shrugged and turned back to her own parchment of notes on Cheering Charms.

Scorpius took several deep breaths and tried to get back to work. The clock seemed to be making no forward progress. He was having dinner with Al at Grimmauld Place after work; he planned to drink quite a lot of wine and pass out in a spare bedroom. The Manor had been even more stultifying than usual this week, and he’d barely seen his father—he was lobbying for some piece of legislation about preserving the dignity of wizarding historical sites, which was to say he wanted tax breaks for old piles like the Manor.

Two hours, which might as well have been nine, later, Al was ushering him inside Grimmauld Place. He liked the Potter House in Ottery St. Catchpole better, but Grimmauld Place was a grand old thing—the Potters had maintained it well, and Lily’s budding interest in interior design had kept it from looking like a museum the way the Manor did.

“How was your day?” Scorpius asked Al when he was sitting down at the kitchen table. Al was opening a bottle of red and sloshing two generous glasses. Behind him, a wooden spoon was stirring a pan of vodka sauce, while a pot of pasta bubbled on the back burner. Al had been the only one of the three Potter siblings to have his father’s knack for cooking. James could at least make a sandwich and scramble an egg, but Lily was…horrifying.

“Nearly got brained by two I-beams.” Al drank half of his wine in a single gulp, and then refilled his glass. “Portridge says the construction site must have a poltergeist, he’s never seen the like. Either that or someone from Knockturn Alley is sneaking in overnight and booby-trapping the place.”

Al had parlayed his talents for arithmancy and miniscule calculations that would have blinded greater wizards (such as Scorpius) into an apprenticeship in magical architecture. He was at a firm called Portridge, Partridge, and Persephone, who were handling the major project to develop a new shopping gallery at the intersection of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. So far, it was delayed three years, had cost a whole Gringotts vault more than projected, and was facing down legal challenges from Keep Knockturn Alley Weird (KKAW, pronounced the same way a manky old vulture would choke to death).

“Shall I have the _pater_ have a word with the old chums,” Scorpius drawled in his poshest accent, which was quite posh.

“Can you, old fellow?” Al answered in his best attempt, which was not very posh at all.

“Merlin’s great swollen knob, what is going on in here?” James drawled from the doorway. “Has someone invited a Finch-Fletchley?”

Scorpius spat his wine all over the table. Al pounded on his back.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you today,” Al said suspiciously.

James shrugged one shoulder and slouched into the kitchen. He Summoned a wine glass and filled it right up to the brim; Al looked like he would have liked to say something but refrained, considering how quickly his own first glass had gone down. “We were out of groceries and I didn’t feel like ordering in a curry.”

“O—kayyy,” Al said. He shot Scorpius a concerned glance. Scorpius waved him off. He could sit here and be normal. That was possible for him. He was a nineteen year old adult male who had been in loads more difficult situations, like the time Professor Longbottom had walked in on him and James having a particularly—athletic go in Greenhouse One during sixth year, when James had come back for the first ever Homecoming Quidditch game. And then the next day they had a conversation about what Was and Was Not Appropriate for Hogwarts Prefects, and what Was and Was Not Setting a Good Example for the Younger Years.

“How were the gutters today?” James asked him.

“Clogged. How were the Dark wizards?”

“Inactive.” James shrugged. “I might as well be in the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad. Dustbins and fanged teacups are my professional specialties.”

“That’s not a _bad_ thing,” Al pointed out.

James shrugged again, as if to say that he was holding all of Britain’s former Death Eaters accountable for his demotion from Dark wizard catcher to defanger of teacups. Scorpius hid a smile behind his wineglass. With Al and James bickering comfortably, it was easy enough for him to sit back and pretend that the last two years hadn’t happened, that he had never thrown a great clonking Muggle wrench into James and Al’s sibling dynamic. All in all, it was a pleasant night—Al made an excellent vodka sauce and he’d gotten fresh pasta from the Muggle supermarket around the corner, as well as a tray of tiramisu for dessert.

“Are you going home?” James asked him as he was fixing two after-dinner coffees. He’d gotten James addicted during fifth year, although Al had remained a proper tea-drinking British wizard.

“Didn’t think so.” Scorpius gestured to the empty wine bottles cluttering up the kitchen counters. “Al said I could crash in Lily’s room.”

“Oh.” James frowned. “You can have mine if you like, I’ve got to get home. I know you always liked that room.”

“Er,” Scorpius responded. Al was supervising a sink of dishes that were busily scrubbing themselves and gave no indication of having heard.

“Or you can take Lil’s.” James backed off with remarkable speed for someone who usually displayed the tact and subtlety of a rampaging hippogriff. His eyes looked almost—panicked when they caught. Scorpius felt his stomach sink to somewhere around his kneecaps. They’d been having such a nice night, and he was remembering all of the reasons he missed James like a damned limb.

“I’ll stick with Lily’s,” Scorpius informed the toes of James’s dragonhide boots.

“Yeah, that’s probably—” James stopped himself from saying whatever he had been about to say. “Al! I’m off. And stop mucking about like a house-elf, we’ll never convince Mum to get one if you keep bloody cleaning everything.” And then his footsteps were echoing down the creaky kitchen hall, and he was gone with a slam of the great front door.

Scorpius and Al regarded each other across the kitchen. “Well,” Al said slowly. “That went well. Better than I would have expected, given that the both of you have been acting like giant fucking prats for the last two years.”

“I have not been acting like a prat.” He couldn’t even say it without a wince. A small one, but a wince nonetheless.

“Scorp. You have been acting like a prat. And James has been no better. Actually, he has been better, because he’s always been the Once and Future King of the Prats. It’s a new and unpleasant look on you.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s no more than you deserve and you know it.” Al seemed to be working up a full head of steam, or perhaps it had been in progress a long time and Scorpius just hadn’t noticed. “When it happened I was sure he’d done something to deserve it, because he’s bloody James and he’s been a wanker as long as I’ve known him. But then he was just so—I mean he was really wrecked. I’ve never seen him like that before. Mum said he didn’t get out of bed for a week; she and Dad were really worried. He almost flunked out of Auror training and you know how hard he worked to get there.”

“What do you want me to say?” Scorpius asked. It was an honest question. By this point, Al had to know that he wasn’t ever going to be one for weepy heart-to-hearts, even if he’d had no idea James had taken it so hard. Well, he’d known James hadn’t taken it well—he’d been there, after all—but the idea that James Potter would have really _suffered_ for an extended period of time hadn’t crossed his mind. It wasn’t that James didn’t feel things deeply, because Scorpius knew very well that he did; but he just wasn’t inclined to _suffer_.  Make others miserable, certainly. Sabotage his life with acts of stupidity or rage, very plausibly. But stay in bed for a week, no.

“Oh, I don’t bloody know.” Al threw down his dish towel and stomped out, and then stomped back in. “Don’t sleep in his damned bed.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Scorpius told him.

Then he asked, “Do you know that girl he’s dating? The blonde one?”

Al sighed, and all the righteous indignation puffed out of him like he’d been hit with a Deflating Charm. “Jenna, the Muggle student? I’ve met her a couple of times. She’s really nice, Scorp. Really fun. They’re a good match.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Scorpius said. He felt numb all over. “I broke up with him, after all. I’m glad he’s got someone.” He slipped past Al and went upstairs to Lily’s room. He left an uncharacteristic trail of clothes across her navy blue and green rug, and then curled up under her comforter. He did not quite cry, but it was a close thing.

 

 

“Malfoy!” Ludmila Loontwhipple’s raspy voice jerked him out of his gutter-induced stupor. “Errand for you.”

Scorpius dragged himself to his feet and to her office’s door. He hated being her errand boy, but anything was better than spending another three seconds reading research reports about gutters. “Yes, Ms. Loontwhipple?”

She gestured at a stack of files that was balanced on one of her spindly-legged chairs. The files rose, tower-like, some three feet into the air. “Those need to go to the Aurors.” She shuffled through some papers on her famously untidy desk. “Auror Li requested them specifically.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He sized up the stack and muttered a few charms; the whole lot rose unsteadily off on the chair and floated towards the door.

“Mind you don’t drop any pages,” she said sharply, as if he were actually an idiot, and not someone who had received more than full marks on his N.E.W.T. Charms exams. And also Defense, although his ability to subdue a full-grown wyvern had nothing to do with his ability to transport a stack of files across the Ministry of Magic.

 

 

Of course James was there when he arrived in the Auror offices, leaning up against the pretty brunette receptionist’s desk with his cup of coffee.

“Some papers from the Charms lab for Auror Li,” Scorpius told her, trying not to look at James.

“He’ll be glad those are here,” James said, wrecking Scorpius’s plans to not look at him. The rust-red Auror robes were a horrible color on him, it turned out, but he still looked like sex on a stick, to borrow one of Norman’s more colorful phrases. And that was the last thing in the world that Scorpius should be thinking about. “C’mon, I’ll take you back.”

 _Would you?_ Scorpius almost asked. Fortunately he had better control of his impulses than he had the last time he’d been alone with James. Not that they were alone in the middle of the Auror offices.

“D’you know what’s in that unholy pile?” James asked, as he led Scorpius through a massive open space filled with messy desks—some worse than Ludmila’s—and people in Auror robes and the flotsam and jetsam of magical law enforcement: Sneakoscopes, a Foe Glass on the wall (reflecting nothing but wavery shadows), goblin-made leg irons incised with magic-blocking spells.

“Didn’t ask. Any excuse to get away from the gutters.”

“Understandable.” James’s hair was curling untidily over the neck of his robe. The red brought out the Weasley carrot in his dark auburn in the most unflattering way possible. It should have been unattractive, but it just—wasn’t. Possibly Scorpius was incapable of finding James Potter unattractive.

 _I’m doomed_.

“It’s got to do with the Knockturn Alley project,” James continued. “Li asked the Committee on Experimental Charms to do some research into what spells might be causing all of the mayhem. It all manifests like Peeves if he had the Elder Wand, but there’s definitely no poltergeist.”

Li turned out to be at lunch, so they carefully transferred the stack of papers onto a chair that James conjured next to his desk. “Can’t put anything on his desk,” he explained. “He’s mental for organization. Not worth my life to get one of his quills a millimeter out of line.”

“Are you working together, then?”

James nodded. “He’s my senior partner. I spend a lot of time getting him tea and fetching his notes, when I’m not doing his fieldwork on the fanged teacups in Tutshill. Brilliant man, though.” The admiration in his voice was clear; Scorpius, meanwhile, was stuck on the mental image of James making tea and taking notes, and not hexing anyone blind out of rage.

“I should be getting back to the lab,” Scorpius said abruptly. This professional, adult-seeming James in his horrid robes, but with the same wicked hazel eyes and khakis that were perpetually frayed around the pockets—he couldn’t take it, all of a sudden. Too many nights pressed together on the Astronomy Tower, too many times watching James shuck identical pairs of trousers before sliding into the Prefects’ bath.

“I’ll walk you out.” James gestured him out of the chaos of the Auror offices, nodding at the receptionist as they passed. They walked to the elevators in silence.

“Look,” James said, finally. He put his palm over the elevator button to stop Scorpius from pushing it, and suddenly they were close, shoulders almost brushing. Scorpius felt hyperaware of James’s presence; he could see his eyelashes, a faint shadow of stubble along his jawline. “I’m—it’s good that you stopped by the other day.”

 _Is it?_ Scorpius wondered. Instead he managed to say, “I’m glad you’re doing well. That you’re happy.” And he was; it turned out that he didn’t have it in him to begrudge James his happiness, his Muggle stunner, his career, any of it. Scorpius felt sometimes like he had nothing, except the dark loom of the Manor and friends who all had their own lives, their own loves and worries.

“I—yeah.” James took his hand off the button. “I’ll see you around, then?”

Scorpius nodded and stepped onto the elevator, and was enveloped by a rustling cloud of paper plane memos. Would they see each other around? They’d avoided each other for two years, vastly complicating Al’s life in the process. He had seen James exactly three times between when they’d broken up and last week, which was impressive in a community as insular as that of wizarding Great Britain. Those three times had been his and Al’s graduation day; at Alexandra Thomas and Rhys Llewellyn’s wedding, where Scorpius had responded by getting so drunk he’d thrown up in a decorative centerpiece and Al had had to carry him home; and they’d run into each other in the lobby of Gringotts.

“Hey.” James’s hand was suddenly in the grate of the elevator, keeping the door from closing all the way. Its disembodied voice responded, _Please remove your hands, robes, hats, and extraneous limbs from the door for departure_. _I repeat, please remove your hands_ …

Scorpius Silenced it with a flick of his wand.

James squinted at him, head cocked to the side like his bear-sized dog Patronus. Scorpius felt like he was being sized up. “I play in a weekend Quidditch league out in Woking. Nothing serious, just pub stuff. We need a Beater though, our other one just got pregnant.”

Scorpius opened and closed his mouth several times without saying anything. He felt as though someone were tightening a vise around his throat.

“Or you know what,” James said. He didn’t sound—defeated, exactly, just as if he was kicking himself for not having known better. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Scorpius answered. “I can—do that. I don’t have anything going on.”

“Right.” James swallowed, gave him a nervous smile. “Come over on Saturday morning around 10. We can Floo out together, the connections are tricky.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Okay.”

They stared at each other, hazel eyes into night-sky blue. Right on cue, the Silencing charm expired: _Please remove your hands_ … James gave a little jerk and pulled back. The grate slid closed and the elevator whisked Scorpius away.

 

 

He managed to get to Saturday morning without seeing Al, since he was sure Al would have Things to Say about him playing Quidditch in James’s pub league. Scorpius almost felt like he should let Al have a go at him—he probably deserved it. And what the hell did he think he was doing, anyway? Playing a spot of Quidditch with the old school mate, who he’d never even been friends with before the hand jobs in the Gryffindor locker room? He doubted James would have him back at this point anyway, with the really fun and overall great Jenna on the scene with her lips, lush breasts, and lack of difficult history.

Scorpius took a deep breath and rang the buzzer. A Muggle walking down the sidewalk gave his Lightning Rod broom an odd look, but Scorpius ignored him. In a few seconds the door buzzed open, which was a fascinating bit of Muggle ingenuity.

James and Ira’s door was ajar. Scorpius knocked and carefully poked his head in. “Hello?” he called.

“Hey Scorpius,” Ira called. He was sprawled on one of the couches, a Muggle girl who Scorpius vaguely recognized from the party draped across his lap. She wasn’t a standout like Jenna, but Scorpius liked the looks of her mass of curly brown hair and cheerful hazel eyes.

“I’m Maggie,” she said. “Ira’s told me about your lot, so you don’t need to act like you’re going to sweep something.”

“Oh,” Scorpius responded, putting his broom back on his shoulder. “That makes things easier.” He didn’t know the protocol for telling Muggles you were shagging that you were a wizard. He supposed this meant they were serious, and wondered if James had introduced Jenna to the wizarding world. Perhaps, if she’d met Al.

“James is just brushing his teeth, want a coffee or anything?”

“I’m okay.” Scorpius sat down on the couch because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “Have you seen a Quidditch game yet?” he asked Maggie.

“He’s dragged me to a game or two. I think it’s bonkers, I can barely remember the rules for football so I’ve really got no hope,” Maggie said. Ira had been hired on as the Assistant to the Assistant Manager for the Tutshill Tornadoes, which, now that Scorpius thought about it, would be a hard job to find a Muggle-suitable lie for.

“Played recently?” Ira asked him.

“Not really,” Scorpius answered. “I’ve been flying at the Manor, but I haven’t hit a Bludger since I graduated. I hope I don’t disgrace James.”

“You won’t disgrace me,” James announced. He ruffled at Scorpius’s hair as if automatically, before yanking his hand back like he’d been burned; ruffling also didn’t work that well today, since Scorpius now had his hair pulled back into what he’d heard a couple of Muggle girls on the subway refer to as a _man-bun_. “Ready, Scorpius?”

He stood and hoisted the backpack with his gear. “When you are.”

“Have a lovely time,” Ira drawled from the couch, which was as eerily reminiscent of year five at Hogwarts as James touching his hair. “Mags, you’ve never seen anyone Floo before, it’s going to blow your mind.”

James rolled his eyes and lit a fire in the living room hearth with a wave of his wand. The fireplace looked ornamental, but James’s magical fire didn’t seem to be burning anything, either.

“Now it’s going to go all green,” Ira narrated, as James threw a handful of Floo powder into the fire. Maggie ooh-ed and ahh-ed appreciatively as James grabbed Scorpius’s elbow, barked “The Red Badger Pub, Woking,” and they stepped into the green flames.

It was indeed a tricky Floo connection—James had to yank him around a few corners, and keep him from stepping out into the Red Badger Pub in Staines-upon-Thames by mistake. Having two backpacks and racing brooms didn’t help, either.

“Don’t mention the other pub,” James muttered as they stumbled out of the fireplace into a cozy, dimly-lit public house. It was mostly empty at this hour, except for a statuesque woman behind the bar and a knot of witches and wizards in various states of Quidditch attire in the corner. “The proprietors got divorced, I’ve heard it was quite messy. They’re our main rivals in the league. And Moravia tends to throw around Bat-Bogey hexes whenever they come up.”

“There’s James and the new one!” a voice called from the crowd in the corner.

Scorpius found himself being examined by a crowd of witches and wizards. They all looked very attractive, strapping, and _Gryffindor_ , with glossy hair and well-defined muscles. The witch with the broadest shoulders—the only one not in Quidditch gear—was visibly pregnant. Scorpius thought that if he’d met them at Hogwarts, they probably would have wanted to shove him into small broom closets, or else ignored him so comprehensively that they wouldn’t have even known he went to the same school.

James made the introductions. It turned out that most of them had, in fact, been in Gryffindor and had graduated around the time he’d started. James was the baby of the group, then, which was a new look for him. The pregnant woman tousled his hair affectionately. Scorpius hid a smile behind a hand at James’s supremely ruffled expression: James was a hair-tousler, not the other way around.

 

 

“Same time next week?” James asked him. They were the only ones left in the Red Badger after the game. Scorpius was feeling a little fuzzy around his edges, courtesy of the victory pints, and also his continued proximity to James Potter’s body, and hands, and the way he could smell sweat and Quidditch leathers if he eased fractionally closer.

“Okay,” he answered. “I should be going.”

“Wild night ahead?” James was staring at the tabletop, drawing his characteristic doodles with the condensation.

“Oh, very. I’ll go home, and forget to brush my teeth, and fall asleep, and when I wake up it will feel like a flobberworm died in my mouth.”

“Stuff of dreams, there.”

Scorpius realized that James didn’t want him to leave. It was in the absolute concentration of his eyes on the table, and in the determined way he kept the conversation going.

“I really need to get home, before I’m too drunk to Floo,” he said, then forced himself to his feet. His gear bag went over his shoulder; Floor powder went into the fire; and then he was stumbling out into the Manor, before he’d even realized that he had run away. Again.

“You’re a great bloody coward,” he told himself, before turning to face the room.

There was a tense pause. A crowd of his father’s Ministry and society chums were all standing around, he realized, martinis and canapes frozen halfway to their mouths at his undignified entrance. A quartet of enchanted string instruments continued to play the Four Seasons.

“Bugger,” he said, and clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, before he fled again.

 

 

His mouth did, in fact, taste like a flobberworm when he woke up the next morning. He groaned and pulled his head back under the coverlet, unable to forget his grand entrance to his father’s charity dinner. Merlin, he’d gotten an invitation—granted a paper one, not a verbal one, as if he was a polite acquaintance and not his father’s only son. He could even remember tossing it into the fireplace, that same night he’d gotten his most recent letter from Norman.

When was the last time he’d spoken to his father? A week or so ago, at least. Scorpius wondered if they’d be talking about the Malfoy heir stumbling through the fireplace like a drunken sod today. Possibly; possibly not. His father always seemed to waver between strict control—no Malfoy would let a flat like a common Weasley!—and absolute indifference—get sorted into Gryffindor? Nary a word.

He would definitely have heard from his sainted mother about it. But then, he could remember _exactly_ the last time he’d spoken to her: early in the hours of New Year’s Day his sixth year, when he’d brought James to his aunt’s godforsaken annual party. James had been in Auror training by then, and had broken Adalberto’s nose in the middle of the dance floor when he’d made one snide comment too many, before following it up with a curse that had opened a great bloody gash down his front and nearly taken his wand arm right off. The Italian Minister of Magic had been hurried away with his bodyguards; it had been on the front page of the _Corriere del Mezzogiorno_. INCIDENZA AL LAGO DI COMO in all-caps, English Wizard Attacks Italian Society, the sub-header. Of course it had gone nowhere, because the family had hushed it up. The reporter had probably suffered an unfortunate, disfiguring (if not fatal) accident within the next month. Such was life in wizarding Italy.

Inevitably, he was thinking about James again: James grinning at him in his bedroom at the lake house, fussing with his bowtie in the grand, gilded mirror; James with blood on his knuckles, tuxedo jacket askew and hair escaping from its pomade to curl over his forehead, murder in his eyes.

He rolled over, trying to resist grinding his hips into the mattress. All of this was his fault. He’d stopped trying to blame anyone or anything else six months ago.

Something was scratching at the door. He crawled out of bed and opened the door an inch. A little paper bird fluttered in, indicating that he would be talking to his father about his drunkenness, dissipation, and inability to comport himself like a proper Malfoy heir. Wonderful. Fantastic. Scorpius snatched it out of the air and unfolded it.

 _Breakfast in 20 minutes_ , his father’s absurdly sixteenth-century handwriting declared.

He crushed it, threw it in the general direction of the fireplace, and rang the bell for coffee. He was unable to face his father uncaffeinated.

A shower, cup of coffee, and de-flobberwormed teeth later, Scorpius was feeling slightly more like a human (and less like a skin-covered sack of shame and emotions) as he trudged up the hall to the dining room.

“Good morning,” he attempted. It struggled, croaked, and died in his throat. He tried again: “Good morning, Father.”

Draco Malfoy paused in the act of pouring cream over his porridge. “You look awful.”

Scorpius shrugged and slouched into a chair to his father’s right. He knew the slouching would enrage him but he didn’t particularly care. _Three, two, one_ …there went the muscle jumping his father’s jaw.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you were out with a social equal,” his father said, as if he was already assuming it was a lost cause.

Scorpius considered. “Possibly.” James was a quarter-blood who had escaped being a ginger by the merest squeak through the Potter-Weasley Punnett square. And no matter how influential Harry Potter was, there was no known universe where his father would consider James a _social equal_. He barely tolerated Scorpius’s continued association with Al; while Scorpius was unsure exactly how much his father had divined about the precise nature of his relationship with James, he had made no secret of the fact that he considered James a dangerous, deviant hooligan. But then James had made no secret of the fact that he considered Draco Malfoy two steps below pond slime.

“I specifically requested that you be present at the event,” he said irritably. “You know how important this legislation is—important sites of wizarding history are being trampled left and right.”

Scorpius slouched further. It hurt his spine—he was not a sloucher by nature. “Didn’t think it was that important.”

“Speak in complete sentences.”

“I didn’t think could be that important, since we live in the same house, and you didn’t actually _speak_ to me about it.”

His father drew back as if Scorpius had threatened him with the Cruciatus or a serving utensil from the Hog’s Head. “If I have to tell you the correct thing to do every single time, your upbringing leaves much to be desired.”

“Whose fault is that?” Scorpius fired back. He felt as if aliens had taken over his brain, like in a Muggle film Norman had dragged him to once.

There was a long pause. Scorpius looked at his father from underneath his eyelashes, wondering what he would do. So far, it was staring at his son with a hand on the old Dark Mark under the heavy, wrist-length black silk of his robe.

“You know,” Draco Malfoy said, sounding tired and contemplative, “I wonder that sometimes. Things were different when I was growing up. It was all very black and white. I…trusted my parents in a way that you’ve never seemed to.” And then he gave himself a little shake. “Not that it makes your public drunkenness and dereliction of duties any more acceptable.”

 

 

But in the final analysis there wasn’t much he could do about it. Shout a bit, make some cutting remarks, foretell shame on the Malfoy name—certainly. However, his father had never seemed to want to do him actual harm, the way his mother had; and Scorpius would see his wand taken away again over his dead body (realistically several others as well) if anyone was foolish enough to try it again.

Al’s head was in his fireplace when he got back up to his room.

“Morning,” Al chirped. “Fancy popping into London for the day?”

“Not really.” Coffee, a shower, and two slices of toast had helped with the hangover, but they hadn’t helped _that_ much. All he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep until noon.

“Come on,” Al wheedled.

“Tomorrow?”

Al deflated abruptly. “No. That won’t help.”

“Help with what?” Scorpius asked. His curiosity was piqued in spite of himself.

“I have a date, I think?” Al said. “And you know I’m rubbish at—” A hand appeared with a pop of sparks by Al’s face and gestured at his hair. “Also what do you wear on a date with a Muggle? And how do I pay for dinner? I have so many questions that only you can help me with, O Most Classy and Handsome of All My Mates Who Also Did an OWL in Muggle Studies.”

A few minutes later, Scorpius emerged from the fireplace in Grimmauld Place. Al had a French press on the table waiting for him, which Scorpius pounced on like a niffler on a Galleon.

“So who’s this Muggle temptress?” Scorpius asked with real interest. Al and Bridget had, in defiance of all sense or reason, continued to date until halfway through seventh year. It had ended after the seventh-year Yule Ball, the exact reasons for which Al was evidently taking to the grave. He’d had a bit of a fling with one of Lily’s mates from Slytherin afterwards, another extremely good-looking blonde, but that had wrapped up well before graduation, and he hadn’t mentioned a girl since then.

“One of Jenna’s friends from home,” Al answered. Scorpius’s stomach lurched. “She’s just taken a job in London but she doesn’t know anyone, and Jenna wants someone to show her around, and so…” He gestured at himself. “I guess Jamesy volunteered me.”

“That’s lovely,” Scorpius said over the roaring in his ears. “Too bad you don’t actually know anything about Muggle London.”

“I know some things!” Al sounded defensive. “I’ve been to all the architectural sites and churches and palaces and so on at this point. I’ve taken the Tube and everything.”

“Congratulations, you know at least as much as a Muggle thirteen-year-old.” Scorpius recognized the waspishness in his voice before the sentence was even out of his mouth, or before the hurt look had appeared on Al’s face. “Sorry, Al. Had a bit of a row at home. Not at my best.”

“You should’ve said.” Al flopped down next to him and nudged him in the shoulder. “Sorry I’ve been prattling on.”

“It’s okay.”

Al blinked at him with his concerned green eyes. “You know you could move in here if you wanted.”

“Probably not the best idea,” Scorpius said. He waved a hand in the air to indicate _James Potter_.

Al sighed, evidently getting it.

“Back to your date,” he prompted. “Have you seen a picture or anything of this seductress?”

 

 

A few hours, two Muggle clothing stores, and a hair-taming cantrip later, Al was as ready as he was likely to get. Scorpius nodded to himself as he looked over his best friend, from the toes of his dragonhide boots, to his slim-legged, dark-wash jeans, and then to the crisp white button-down that he’d gone over with the Impervius Charm under an olive-green coat, topped off with a scarf in a subtle blue and green plaid. For someone who usually wore battered jeans, trainers held together by hope and Spellotape, and a Weasley sweater, the transformation was striking—it was actually possible to tell how good-looking Al was, instead of vaguely hoping that the lumps were from the sweater and not from a twin that his infant body had only half-consumed in the womb. James, on the other hand, had stumbled into a laid-back, American-cool uniform of plaid and khaki early on, cementing the title of “Best-Looking Potter/Weasley Male, Shame About the Personality” by fourth year.

“You’ll do,” he pronounced.

“Are you sure about this?” Al poked at the scarf with a tentative finger. “Also why did you roll the cuffs of my trousers up like that?”

“All of the Muggles are doing it,” Scorpius assured him. “At least all of the handsome young ones who want to get laid.”

“I don’t want to get laid!” Al protested, and then reconsidered. “Well. I’m not interested in _just_ getting laid. I mean, I hope we get on as friends if nothing else but it’s not like I would be _opposed_ …”

Scorpius let him natter while he pulled two beers out of the fridge. “Here,” he said, shoving it into Al’s hand mid-word. “Calms the nerves.”

Al drank half of it in a gulp. “Thanks. For all of this.”

Scorpius raised his beer in salute. “Good luck out there, hippogriff.”

 

 

Malfoy Manor seemed even colder and emptier than it usually did when he Flooed home. Al and James and Jenna and whatshername were probably having a lovely night, in some upscale, overpriced Muggle pub, and he was—here. At least he hadn’t fallen out of the fireplace into a society event this time.

Scorpius looked around his bedroom, once he’d climbed back upstairs: the blue paper on the walls, the neatly-made bed. The house-elves had repaired the wreckage he’d left it in the night before, as they always did. He supposed he could order dinner. Read for a while.

Or he could leave.

With an internal shrug, Scorpius headed back downstairs. “The Leaky Cauldron,” he told the green flames.

He didn’t have any intention of staying there, but once he’d dusted the ash off his shoulders, Alexandra Llewellyn née Thomas waved him over to a table in the corner. She was sitting with Rhys and an unfamiliar wizard.

“Hey Scorp,” she chirped. He flinched reflexively, but was past correcting her—some people never learned. “Got plans?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

She gestured to the open chair. “Want to join us? This is my cousin William. He’s over from the Bahamas for the holidays.”

Scorpius nodded politely, before getting stuck on William from the Bahamas' openly appraising expression.

“Er,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet _you_ ,” William said. He had a voice that paired mahogany with expensive chocolate.

“Will’s gay,” Alexandra announced with the tact of a rampaging Hungarian Horntail. “So maybe you can show him, you know. The scene. The nightlife.”

“I don’t really, erm, get out much,” Scorpius said. “Work and…things.” Also, what was he? A walking guidebook to gay wizarding London? But maybe, he thought. Maybe he should—try this. Sitting at home emoting over James had gotten him exactly nowhere in the last two years, and James was off on a double date with his beautiful Muggle girlfriend.

He sat down. William smiled at him.

 

 

Several drinks later, Scorpius had to admit that he was having a nice time. William was handsome and attentive without being cloying, and it was good to catch up with Alexandra and Rhys. He hadn’t seen either of them since the wedding, which he only remembered in pieces anyway.

“I’ll get the next round,” he said, pushing away from the table. But the bar was crowded and he didn’t feel like shoving his way up to the front and getting drinks spilled on his shirt—this is why I never go out, he thought in disgust.

“Need a hand?” It was Will, come to his rescue. He had very nice cheekbones, and very full lips.

“Well,” said Scorpius. “Um, sure.”

William’s shoulders cut a swathe through the crowd. Their arms brushed a few times before they returned to the table, each holding two pint glasses.

 

 

“I’ve had a nice night,” William told him as they were getting ready to leave. Scorpius paused in the act of wrapping his scarf around his neck. He was almost certainly too drunk to Floo, and having done it the night before he didn’t want to push his luck. But the Tube was a straight shot to Grimmauld Place, where he could collapse in Lily’s room.

“Yes,” answered Scorpius.

“Are you sure you should be going home alone?” It was a clear come-on.

“Oh, I’m not,” he managed in response. “Friend lives a few minutes away.”

William looked disappointed. “I’ll be here another three weeks. You know where to find me.”

And that was that. Scorpius pushed his was out of the Leaky Cauldron, and headed for the Tube station down Charing Cross Road. He wondered why he didn’t feel more—excited. William was handsome, intelligent, clearly interested, and unlikely to make long-term demands on his energy or affections.

It wasn’t until he got to Grimmauld Place that Scorpius realized the flaw in his plans: what if Al actually _was_ off getting laid? He didn’t have a key, and he couldn’t exactly send his Patronus racing off across Muggle London to summon him.

There were no lights on in the windows, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything—the kitchen faced onto the back of the house, as did Al’s bedroom. Al almost never used the front parlor. Said it gave him the creeps.

Scorpius rang the bell. He could hear it toll sonorously somewhere in the depths of the house.

He had almost given it up when the knob turned, and the door creaked open.

“’Lo,” James said, because _of course_.

“Sorry,” Scorpius said. “I’ll just be going.”

“Why?” James tugged him inside. “It’s bloody freezing. And it’s supposed to start sleeting.”

“I was looking for Al,” he said.

James rolled his eyes. “Out of luck there. He and Martina are off being disgusting.”

“It er, went well, then?”

“For one of us,” James said. The door shut with a bang, then all of the bolts started doing themselves up. Scorpius could hear Wizarding radio warbling up from the kitchen, but the bolts sounded somehow definitive, loud in Number 12, Grimmauld Place’s characteristic quiet.

“What happened?”

James shrugged. “Oh, the usual. Jenna was being a bit much after they left so I came ‘round here to get some peace and quiet.”

Scorpius really, really did not want to talk to James about his girlfriend troubles. “Look, I should just go to bed. I didn’t want to Floo home and, well, I should have checked before I even came over.” He started for the stairs, but then James caught him by the wrist and pulled him back around.

They were so close. Scorpius could feel James’s breath against his mouth, could see the thin golden rims around his pupils, even in the murky half-light of the entry hall. He didn’t know who moved first, but then they were kissing open-mouthed, no space between them, James’s hands gripping the back of his coat. Something pulled open inside Scorpius’s chest as James pushed him upstairs.

James’s room looked like it always had, except neater, because James didn’t spend as much time there. There was the same ancient Chudley Cannons poster, and the same untidy desk—a perennial mystery, as James had never done homework until seventh year.

“This is,” Scorpius said between kisses, “a terrible idea.”

“Mm,” James answered into the skin where his neck met his shoulder. His coat was long gone and his shirt was halfway unbuttoned. “Stop talking.”

As if Scorpius was ever going to do anything else.

 

 

He woke up the next morning freezing cold, with a horrible crick in his neck. James had stolen all of the blankets, both pillows, and 80% of the bed with his sodding extra two inches.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Scorpius announced with feeling, sitting up abruptly. His head was pounding and the flobberworms had re-colonized his mouth; his hands smelled like James and James’s come. The rest of his body felt pleasantly used.

“Whozzat?” James fumbled his way up, shoving fringe out of his eyes. “ _Oh_.”

“Yes,” Scorpius said. “ _Oh_.”

“Damn.” James collapsed back down into his warm nest of blankets. If there had been an Auror aptitude test for waking up quickly and becoming alert without a thirty-minute head start and two cups of coffee, James would have failed it.

An arm emerged from the James-pile and scrabbled at Scorpius’s side. “C’mere.”

He shoved James away. “No.”

“God _damn_ it.” James heaved himself back up. “Will you just stop bloody— _thinking_ and _obsessing_ and _panicking_?”

“I am doing no such thing,” said Scorpius, who was in fact doing all three, with a side of inadvertent and irrational happiness that he was trying to kill. With fire. Inside his own mind. Because there was no known universe where this was going anywhere other than complete and utter disaster. Al! What was Al going to say? James had a girlfriend who was by all accounts wonderful. How could he have done this? He was better than this.

“You are.” James was, blast and _damn_ him, kissing the back of his neck, nosing his hair out of the way to mouth at the skin over his spine. “I know you, baby.”

“Do you have _no_ ability to think through the consequences of your actions?” Scorpius spat out.

“Mm,” said James. “I rather think I do.” Scorpius could hear the lazy smirk in his voice, could feel it right along with the warm hand sliding over his hip, thumbing at the ridge of muscle over his hipbone. He could also feel himself getting hard.

“No,” he said again, shoving James off and rolling out of bed. It felt like the something that had half-healed last night, pressed up against James's body, was ripping back open inside of his chest. He pulled on his clothes, hands starting to shake. He needed to get out of here.

“Fine,” James snapped from the bed. “Run away. Like you always bloody do. I should have fucking known better.”

Scorpius froze, halfway through buttoning his shirt, and then finished. His fingers felt numb, oversized and useless.

 

 

He was sitting in the kitchen when Al came in, staring at the fireplace. The fat brown jar of Floo powder beckoned to him from the mantel; he didn’t think his stomach was up to Apparating.

“You’re here?” Al chirped.

Scorpius put his head down on the table and shut his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Who let you in?”

“James. Had a few too many drinks, didn’t want to risk the Floo.”

“Oh.” Al was probably frowning and cocking his head to the side. “He didn’t go home with Jenna?”

“Apparently not.” Scorpius forced himself to rally. “So how was your Muggle? What was her name, Martina?”

“Wonderful!” And Al was off. It was like fourth year all over again, although Al had developed enough not to describe the dimensions of her breasts, and clearly he and Martina had not been debating Arithmancy.

“So did you,” Scorpius gestured.

“No, I really wanted to get to know her, she seems fantastic. We’re going out again tomorrow though.”

“Of course.” He put his head back down. Al was such a good person.

“You okay?” Al rubbed his shoulder.

“Yes,” he lied.

“Still here?” James asked from the door.

Scorpius shut his eyes tighter, wondering how quickly he could make for the Floo powder. Why was he even still here?

“Fuck right off, Al,” James ordered, with characteristic brotherly affection.

“Are—” Al started, then stopped. “I—” Long pause. “I don’t want to hear about this.” And then he slammed out of the kitchen. It was possibly the greatest show of temper he’d ever displayed in the eight and a half years he’d been Scorpius’s best mate.

“That went well.”

Scorpius scraped himself up off of the table and eyed James. “Did you think it would?”

“Didn’t think about it at all.” James sat down next to him.

“Is that supposed to come as a surprise?” Scorpius snapped. “To say nothing of,” he indicated the air between them, which included months of sneaking around Hogwarts; more lies to Al than even a Doria Pamphilj Malfoy should be proud of; a year and a half (ish) of a relationship that was occasionally stable, at best; and then almost two years of soul-sucking bleakness, “which I’m sure you knew Al would be thrilled about.”

“Al didn’t exactly factor into my thinking. Which, okay, I could have done more of,” James said very quickly, in anticipation of Scorpius sniping at him again. “But you were there, too, or have you forgotten?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” Scorpius said venomously, to hide all of the things that he wished he could forget. And never wanted to forget if he lived to be two hundred and fifty-three, like the look in James’s eyes when he’d been sinking into Scorpius’s body the night before.

James looked hurt. “You didn’t seem that drunk when you got here last night. Not enough to not know what we were doing.”

Scorpius forced himself to take several deep breaths. _Calm_ , he thought. _Calm_. “Look. I’m still here. I just feel awful. About a lot of things. And you’re not…helping right now.”

“Okay.” Cautiously, James slipped an arm across his shoulders, and began to rub in small, soothing circles. It felt nice. Absurdly right. Scorpius felt like every cell in his body was straining towards James. Only his brain was in the way, spinning along like it always did: but this time, maybe, it was right.

“James,” he said quietly into his forearms.

“Mhmm?”

“We can’t.”

James took his hand away; Scorpius felt twenty degrees colder and so very alone. “Why in Merlin’s name not?”

“You have a girlfriend. Al likes her, so she has to be a decent person.”

“Don’t bloody bring Al into this.”

He sat up, rubbing at his eyes. They felt gritty and exhausted. “He’s my best friend. He was nice to me while you were still trying to shove people’s heads down toilets and making hissing noises every time I walked into the common room.”

“We’re miles past all of that.”

“It’s not like I can forget it ever happened.”

James slammed a fist down onto the table. Scorpius jumped. “Will you ever,” he said in a tightly-controlled voice, “stop making me pay for the shit I did when I was fifteen? I was a little sod, okay? I admit it. I’ve been admitting it for years.”

“Then you do things like cheat on your girlfriend, and it’s hard not to remember.”

“You know what?” James roared, control gone. “I bloody give up!”

The second Potter of the morning slammed out of the kitchen, only James sent things crashing off the walls behind him. A couple of portraits squealed in alarm. The posthumous one of Scorpius’s somewhat-uncle, Sirius Black, yelled “Give ‘em hell, James!”

“Fuck,” he said quietly, for the second time in one morning, and perhaps the fourth time in his entire life. Outside of bed. With James.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the first time in a long time that he’d found the Manor’s silence peaceful, instead of oppressive—at least there was no one shouting at him here. His father might be wafting around radiating disappointment, but that had been happening for years and Scorpius had long since learned to tune it out.

The thought of dragging himself to work in the morning was almost unbearable. It had been possibly the worst weekend of his life, since he’d broken things off with James in the first place. Why had he even done it? James’s temper, which he’d seen this morning. The barely-repressed violence that oscillated beneath his surface, much like the dungeons of the Manor. And then, of course, the fear. Not _of_ James, precisely—Scorpius could hold his own there, Auror training or no—but fear of what his life would (might) be like with James.

Scorpius knew very well that he could be cold, mercenary, cruel, and more than capable of his own brand of violence. His upbringing had left him few alternatives. What was he supposed to do, lie down with a whimper at Adalberto’s feet? Throw himself on his mother’s tender mercies, which would have been even worse? Give up and cry every time the Jameses of years one through three had mocked him for having a Death Eater father?

Al had been a civilizing influence. Even Norman had been, in his own way. Quidditch, excelling in his classes, gaining the approval of his professors, beating Al out to be the Gryffindor prefect in their year (though Al had inevitably ended up as Head Boy anyway)—all of that had been the bulwark he’d built against the horror of the life he might have had, of the person he could easily have been if a few cards had fallen differently.

James shook all of that to its core. He had never stopped bringing out the worst in Scorpius: unpredictable curses, frozen silences, terrible selfishness. He had his parents to look towards every time he needed an example of how wrong it could all go.

Even if James had also, perhaps, brought out the best in him. Scorpius remembered sitting with him on top of the Astronomy Tower, watching their Patronuses gambol in the air above the stones; or during fifth year, when he’d summoned reserves of patience he hadn’t known he possessed to teach James six years of Charms in six months. James had kissed him wildly when he’d gotten back the last E.E. he’d needed to qualify for the Aurors, not caring that the entire maniac tribe of his family had seen them.

There were a thousand other moments like that, moments when it seemed like madness to have thrown it all away.

But always, there was the fear. And Scorpius was afraid that the fear was always going to be bigger than everything else.

 

 

The next two weeks passed in a haze. Scorpius made no progress on the gutters, but he was starting to believe Loontwhipple wasn’t expecting him to. By the end of the second week, he was staring into space with his quill on the table, not even bothering to look like he was trying. He hadn’t heard from Al; he certainly hadn’t heard from James.

Christmas decorations were going up all around London, both magical and Muggle. All of the holiday cheer made Scorpius itch to cast some hexes—he could not remember ever having felt less cheerful in his life. In fact, he felt like he was dead inside, which was a less-than-helpful frame of mind to be in as he dragged himself up from his desk, then through the Floo connection to Diagon Alley. He needed a present for his father: something expensive that would indicate a baseline ability to be a Malfoy, because it was easier to buy the blasted present than to deal with his father’s eternal disappointment.

He couldn’t care less, though, as he struggled through the holiday crowd toward Flourish and Blotts. Garlands of pine and holly had been hung over the streets, with tiny glowing fairies peeking through the greenery; most of the windows were lit with candles and drifted with magical non-melting snow. A few blocks down, the half-built Knockturn Alley shopping gallery glowered against the skyline with the menace of a nesting queen dragon.

Flourish and Blotts was mobbed. He fought his way to the potions section—he’d heard a group of witches from the Potions Association talking about a new retrospective on Libatius Borage, and that was as good a place to start as any.

“Scorpius,” he heard a deep, chocolate-and-mahogany voice call from the next shelf over.

“Er, hello. Christmas shopping?” he asked William inanely.

William nodded, indicating the basketful of books that was bobbing at his hip. “My Gran asked me to pick up a few things for her while I was here. There isn’t any place like this in the Bahamas, and she hates going up to the States. You?”

Scorpius pulled the Borage volume off the shelf. It was gratifyingly heavy, with an embossed leather cover that had to cost a stack of Galleons. “For my father.”

“About a New World wizard?” William smiled with very white teeth.

They made inane small talk about Borage as they crept forward through the checkout line. William turned out to be a trainee Potions master, and had very decided opinions of Borage’s legacy for New World potions-making. Scorpius was well aware, as he watched William count out his Galleons and Sickles, that if he could just be a normal wizard—one without a James problem, one who didn’t over-complicate everything in his life—he would be enjoying himself immensely. William was intelligent and exceedingly handsome, with the classical features of an African god, and there was still that pleasantly appraising look in his eyes.

“Would you like a drink?” William asked him when they were both done, indicating the Leaky Cauldron at the end of the street.

Scorpius wavered. He shouldn’t be doing this, he thought; but then wondered why in Merlin’s name he _shouldn’t_? “I need to get home soon, but maybe a quick one,” he equivocated for no earthly reason.

William ordered himself a Firewhiskey; Scorpius, feeling restrained after the wreckage alcohol had helped make of his life, had a cider. They leaned against the bar with the rest of the Friday after-work crowd. Scorpius let William do most of the talking. Being a wizard in the Bahamas sounded extremely different from being a wizard in England, even though William had attended the American wizarding school Ilvermorny on scholarship. “Much less separate, especially out in the country,” William elaborated. “It’s different in the States, but in the islands…” He shrugged descriptively. “You’d call half of Gran’s clients Muggles here.”

“Interesting,” he answered, because it was. He ran a fingertip around the rim of his glass, making it hum. William’s honey-dark eyes followed his finger. Scorpius put his hand back on the table. “I have to go.”

“Back to your friend?”

Scorpius laughed, and was appalled at how bitter his voice sounded. “No.” He tugged a hand through his hair and redid his ponytail, to give himself something to do with his hands while he collected his excuses. “Just need to get home.” It was the best he could come up with.

“Listen.” William leaned back on the bar with another shrug. “I’m leaving in four days. There are three gay wizards on my whole island. One of them is sixteen and the other two are married to witches. I enjoy your company. But there’s no pressure for it to be anything…serious.”

Scorpius swallowed. Why didn’t he want to do this? It could hardly make things worse. Maybe it would help. Merlin, he wanted a drink, but that would _definitely_ not help. Alternatively, it would make everything better. “Can we just talk a while longer?”

They ended up walking down Diagon Alley, looking in all the shop windows. William had a twisted fascination with the cold and winter clothing. “Never worn a cloak like this in my life.” He indicated the heavy-weight, waterproof wool one slung around his shoulders. “I showed up with like, a jacket. I borrowed this from Uncle Dean.”

“Want a heating charm?” Scorpius offered. He was tempted to use one on himself. It was an appalling night out, with the sky threatening rain, sleet, or an ungodly combination thereof.

“Nah, I want to feel it while I can,” William said, taking hold of his hand and tugging him into a dark space next to Fortescue’s. They kissed. William’s mouth tasted like Firewhiskey, and his body felt pleasantly solid between Scorpius and the wall.

After a few minutes, Scorpius stepped back. He wiped a hand across his mouth. His body was reacting—he wasn’t _dead_ —but none of it felt…right. “Sorry. You’re gorgeous. I just can’t.”

William swore fluently into the night. “Alexandra said you have a hell of an ex.”

“She had a crush on him for a while,” Scorpius explained. “And then she kissed me. Her early instincts weren’t great. Well. He likes girls too. He’s actually got a girlfriend. But we, um.” He stumbled to a halt.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is _way_ too damn complicated for four days.” William leaned forward and kissed him chastely on the cheek. “I had a good time, though, before we got to kissing. If you’re ever in the Bahamas and want to discuss some more Borage…”

 

 

“I can’t even get a no-strings-attached night of passion with an island god right,” Scorpius told the mirror in his bathroom. His reflection winced.

“Well, dear…” it said in a motherly tone which he sincerely hoped to never hear come out of his own mouth. “Perhaps you’re not cut out for one night stands. Most young wizards these days, I ask you. Back when I was made…”

He left it talking as he climbed into a steaming-hot shower. He’d let it start getting ideas when he first moved back from Hogwarts and was desperate for anything to break the silence (other than the peacocks), and it now had decided _opinions_. Apparently modern wizarding society showed poorly against the grand old year of 1656.

Scorpius shut his eyes and turned his face up into the jet of water. He should apologize to Al, he assumed, but he wasn’t even sure what he would be apologizing _for_. Sorry I shagged your brother when he should have been at home with his girlfriend. Sorry I helped your brother cheat on his girlfriend. Sorry I dated your brother in the first place. Sorry I broke up with your brother and he plunged into a major depression. Sorry I lied to you, again.

Having failed to drown himself in the shower, despite his best efforts to the contrary, Scorpius sat down at his immaculate roll-topped desk. He clicked out a ballpoint pen and poised its tip over his favorite heavy, snow-white parchment.

 _Sorry_ , he wrote.

He stared at it a while, before pulling out his sealing wax and scrawling _Al Potter_ on the outside of the envelope.

 

 

He had a return letter from Al on his lunch tray the next day. Marigold delivered it with a polite, effective bow and a minimal number of Master Scorpius-es.

It was brief. It didn’t sound exactly like he was forgiven, but neither was he _not_ forgiven.

 

 

He showed up to Grimmauld Place a few hours later, peace offering (an illustrated seventeenth-century guide to the wizarding world’s architectural wonders, liberated from the Malfoy library) in hand. He hit the bell; Al opened the door promptly and led the way down to the kitchen, where the Potter clan seemed to do most of its London living.

“Have I ever told you,” Al asked, regarding him over the top of his beer, “that you make life harder on yourself than anyone I’ve ever known?”

Scorpius flicked his bottle cap back and forth across the scarred tabletop. “Once or twice.”

“I just don’t understand. Why’d you do it? You seemed fine the last few times you’d seen each other. I was, well.” He stopped. “I thought everything could be…normal.”

“I’m not sure James and I could ever be normal,” Scorpius said with complete honesty.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It was a moment of weakness.”

“But I thought it was _over_. I thought you wanted it to be _over_.”

“Fine.” Scorpius considered his Imp’s Breath India Pale Ale, rolling the bitterness of the hops across his tongue. “Sometimes I’m wrong about things. This may, I know, come as a great shock.”

“Merlin’s great ruddy knob.” Al dropped his head into his hands and dug his fingers into his already-untidy hair. “Does he _know_?”

“No.”

There was a pause.

“I think,” he admitted delicately, “that I have cast a rather strong Reducto on the chance of James and I making another go of it.”

“Stronger than the one where you blew up Professor Jones’s desk and almost blinded half of Ravenclaw?” At least Al felt positively enough towards him to joke.

“Er, yes.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Al said. He didn’t sound it, though. He’d never approved of Scorpius and James, not really, even after it had all come out of its semi-transparent, not-very-well-built-to-begin-with, might-as-well-call-it-an-open-secret, closet. Al, Scorpius realized, would absolutely love William Thomas. He was the living incarnation of the kind of wizard he thought Scorpius should end up with.

“Have you seen your Muggle seductress again?” Scorpius asked, quite done with talking about James.

“A couple of times. She’s a bit of all right,” he said with feeling. “S’weird watching what I say all the time, though. I dunno why she keeps wanting to make plans, I think I come across like a right nutter sometimes. She asked why I don’t have a cell phone about seventeen times. Maggie helps, though.”

Scorpius continued to ask polite questions about Martina the Muggle. She did sound lovely, although Scorpius did not entirely trust Al’s taste in women; either way it had to be nice for him to date someone who had no clue what having the last name Potter meant. Maybe that was why James and by extension, Ira, had started hanging around Muggles so much—James had always had a harder time with the Potter thing than Al had, though.

“Want another beer?” Al asked after concluding the blow-by-blow of their most recent date at the British Museum, where he had embarrassed himself by asking what the point of the Lewis Chessmen was, if they didn’t attack each other.

“Sure.”

Al produced two more bottles from the fridge. “I should probably get started on the damned Christmas decorations. The whole clan is coming to London this year.”

Scorpius had been enjoying Grimmauld Place’s decided lack of Christmas cheer, but he supposed it was too much to ask for it to remain a sanctuary forever. “I’ll help, I guess.”

“ _Too_ kind, you are.” Al conjured a holly garland and launched it at Scorpius’s face; he retaliated with an avalanche of Christmas balls that knocked Al out of his chair. He disappeared with a yelp, one hand clinging to the edge of the table as the rest of him was swallowed by the mountain of brightly-colored ornaments.

“One day you’ll learn you can never win,” Scorpius informed him primly, directing the holly to drape itself becomingly around the doorframe.

 

 

They spent the rest of the day becoming increasingly silly, courtesy of a batch of eggnog that Grandmother Weasley had sent over, and a pot of mulled wine that Al made once all the eggnog was gone. Even with the silliness, Scorpius thought they’d done a bang-up job on the decorations: a ten-foot Christmas tree towered in the salon, with a modest six-footer next to the fireplace in the kitchen; both were encrusted with the rescued Christmas balls and no-spark, heat-free candles. Every doorway was festooned with garlands and red-and-green plaid ribbons, and Scorpius had fashioned the ones twined around the banister to sing Good King Wenceslas as a round whenever anyone climbed the stairs. (That was a small piece of payback for helping Al with the Christmas spirit.)

“There,” Al announced, using his wand to finish frosting the boughs of the Christmas tree in the salon. “I think that should do it. Even Lils can’t complain.”

“Lucky that one of us has got taste.” Scorpius ducked the jet of enchanted ice that Al sent at him; it hit a green-upholstered armchair instead.

“Thanks for helping, though. There’s no way I would have done all this on my own.”

“What are gay wizards for, after all,” Scorpius drawled back, doing the most affected voice he could manage through the layers of wine numbing his tongue. “I should open a side business in fashion and holiday decoration consulting. Except for then I’d have to murder myself because, ugh.”

Al flopped onto the couch and hung his legs over the arm. He peered at Scorpius upside down through his messy fringe. “Mum wants to have a holiday party this year and introduce James and me to eligible witches. She’s concerned about the Muggles. Mostly I think it’s Grandmother Weasley.”

“And yet the Weasleys are so _known_ for being blood traitors.” The thought that the indomitable Grandmother Weasley was so concerned about Jenna made Scorpius feel ill, or possibly he could blame the eggnog and wine swirling together in his stomach.

“No one would care if they’d gone to Hogwarts. Apparently it’s _cultural_.”

“Quite.” Scorpius squinted up at the tree. He flicked his wand and it settled fractionally to the left. “It looks properly centered now.”

“I can’t tell the bloody difference,” Al said, which was rich coming from someone who had received an Outstanding in Arithmancy. Scorpius would have assumed it was impossible to receive an Outstanding in Arithmancy and go on to a career in wizarding architecture, without being able to tell the difference between a Christmas tree that was centered on the wall, and a Christmas tree that was _almost_ centered on the wall.

“So who’s coming to this fête?”

“Oh, the usual suspects. All of the Weasleys, the Weasley-Grangers, the Scamanders, some Quidditch people from Mum’s work and some Ministry people from Dad’s. The big news is that Aunt Fleur is bringing over the veela nieces from France.”

“Any veela nephews?” Scorpius joked, because he thought Al would appreciate it. He was quite blond enough to not need a veela poncing about, competing for who had the most beautiful golden locks.

“Er,” said Al weakly. “Um, I was thinking it was maybe best if you ah, didn’t come. With the um, the James thing.”

Scorpius discarded the initial sensation that someone—specifically, his best friend—had dumped a cauldron of stoat bile over his head. “I understand,” he answered instead, because he did. He and James had kept their distance for the last two years, after all, and recent events had done nothing to disprove the wisdom of that strategy in Al’s eyes: Al, who had never wanted them together to begin with, because of the lying, and the sneaking around, and perhaps most of all because he’d believed their innocuous-yet-increasingly-implausible excuses long past anyone else at Hogwarts. Al didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body; Scorpius hadn’t realized until much later how betrayed he’d felt by the two of them.

With some effort, Scorpius redirected the conversation to Quidditch. The Cannons were having a banner year, all the way up at mid-table, and he was willing to let Al conjecture the heights to which they could climb.

 

 

Several hours later, Scorpius was once more curled up under Lily’s coverlet. He could faintly hear a Muggle car rumbling around Grimmauld Place; behind his eyelids, all he could see was James’s back as he’d slammed out of the kitchen downstairs. “I bloody give up,” he’d shouted. It had hurt, it still hurt, one more gash on the ledger of their relationship.

He sat up and kicked the covers aside. There was no way he was sleeping, but he still felt too drunk to risk any of the available methods for getting back to the Manor.

The kitchen felt unbalanced and empty without a Potter or a Weasley in it. He quietly fixed himself a cup of coffee, hoping it would help sober him up. There were always potions, but Al didn’t keep them stocked, and he didn’t trust himself to brew one in this state.

“Malfoy,” growled a voice from the portrait of Kreacher, Grimmauld Place’s deceased house-elf, that hung by the stove. It was definitely not Kreacher. Scorpius raised his eyes from the bitter depths of his coffee cup, to connect with the ice-blue stare of Sirius Black.

Could my life get any worse? he wondered. Ms. Granger-Weasley had commissioned the portrait as a gift for Harry Potter around fifth year. Somewhat-uncle Black had never bothered to hide his distrust of Scorpius, much like the Grandmother Weasley. Now he mostly ignored him.

Uncle Sirius didn’t quite fit in Kreacher’s portrait, as it was significantly smaller than his own. Kreacher had decamped for parts unknown—he’d heard from someone that they hadn’t gotten along. And the perspective was off; Sirius’s face seemed too close to the edges of the frame, magnified so that he was all intense icy blue eyes and shaggy dark hair. They looked absolutely nothing alike. He didn’t even look like Grandmother Malfoy, who had been his cousin.

“Yes?” Scorpius responded, when it became clear that Uncle Sirius was waiting for some kind of response.

“I know your family and I don’t trust a damn one of them,” he announced.

“Thank you, that’s very helpful.” Possibly that was the mulled wine talking.

“But I do trust my godson, and he says that you’re all right.”

Scorpius had no idea that he was a topic of conversation for Harry Potter and his godfather’s portrait. “I suppose I should be flattered to get an exception, Uncle.” It was definitely the mulled wine. Scorpius was not in the habit of giving cheek to authority figures. Although it was a bit…sad to consider a picture bolted to a wall an authority figure.

 _You’re pathetic_ , a mental voice that sounded like James informed him. _Grow a bloody pair._

“Still,” Uncle Black continued, as if Scorpius hadn’t spoken, “you’re the saddest excuse for a Gryffindor I’ve ever seen, hiding in here moping like a sad bloody Hufflepuff.”

Sirius Black and James Potter were conspiring to make him feel worse than he had already, which he wouldn’t have thought possible.

“I’m not sure why my emotions offend you.”

“It’s because…” Sirius leaned closer, bringing his blue eyes right up to the front of the portrait, “it’s all so unnecessary for the lot of you. You’re young, you’re talented, you aren’t growing up with a war hanging over your heads. Why on earth should you mope around being miserable? Go get into some trouble. Buy some Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes and set them off in inappropriate places. Get too drunk at a family party. Snog whoever you bloody want to snog.”

“I’ve done two of those things,” he felt compelled to point out.

“Then try harder! The second Black in history to go into Gryffindor, and you’re a spineless, overly-polite little Malfoy snot.”

“I don’t appreciate unnecessary chaos,” Scorpius said, aware that he sounded unbearably prim but unable to help himself.

“Fine.” Sirius leaned back far enough that Scorpius could see him cross his arms over his chest. “Just sit around sniveling and feeling sorry for yourself. It’s gotten you _so_ far already.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Scorpius snapped. “I’ll just go throw myself at James, shall I? Because obviously if _you_ would have done it, it’s the smart move. Because your choices got you _so far_.”

Sirius smirked. “They did get me a hero’s death protecting my godson, and knowing that I never compromised my principles. Have you even got a principle under all that perfect hair?”

“Of course I’ve got _principles_!”

“Then _do something about them_! What’s the bloody _point_ if you just sit around _moping_?” Sirius roared at him.

“ _Fine_!” he shouted back.

“Er,” said Al from the doorway. “Is everything quite…all right in here?”

 

 

The sun did, eventually, inevitably, rise, and Scorpius was left to deal with his life. Somewhat-Uncle Sirius had not pulled any punches when telling Al to, and quote, bugger out of James’s love life, which had reignited the whole argument with a certain—earthy element not previously present. Scorpius didn’t think Al was talking to him; nor did he particularly want to talk to Al. Mostly he just wanted to get out of Grimmauld Place with what tattered shreds of self-possession he was still able to marshal.

He managed to sneak out the Floo in the kitchen without incident, and found himself back at the Manor, unlocking the broomshed and pulling out his Lightning Rod. Flying cleared his head. He made slow, careful laps over the grounds. A fog was hovering over the gardens, so thick and icy that it had attained the composition of a frozen Weasley sweater. At least the peacocks couldn’t see him. Neither could anyone else.

As he flew, turning the precise corners of the maze of hedges—occasionally jerking a foot or a cloak hem out of the way of a snapping holly; the historic Malfoys would plant their little diversions—Scorpius reflected on his life, on his choices. He was probably the most cowardly Gryffindor to ever live. Perhaps he wasn’t such a terrible Malfoy after all, then; cowardice was a defining feature of the latter generations. His father. His grandparents Malfoy. Perhaps even their parents. What, after all, was the motivation behind preserving the Malfoy name, the Malfoy fortune, the Malfoy _preeminence_ , if not fear? Fear of losing control. Fear of the rising influence of Muggleborn witches and wizards and even, yes, Muggle technology—he’d seen in his long rambles through London that they were creative, innovative, inventive in a way that wizarding society wouldn’t even bother to understand or value.

Perhaps it was time, to choose a different path. He still didn’t know why the Sorting Hat had put him in Gryffindor all those years ago, other than a profound and puckish sense of humor. Maybe this was it.

 

 

Two days later, he was meeting James for a civilized after-work drink. He had sent the owl, then promptly thrown up, then had rather too much to drink and thrown up again. But he was here, propped against the wall outside a Muggle pub that James had suggested. It was close to absolutely nothing related to their lives: not James’s flat, or Grimmauld Place, or Diagon Alley, or the Ministry’s red telephone boxes or public lavatories. Instead, it was a working-class kind of street, tucked underneath the shadow of a Muggle football stadium somewhere in Tottenham. A fish and chips cart down the block was blowing the scent of fryer grease towards him; there was a pet store across the street, with a window full of the least-magical reptiles he’d ever seen.

James showed up late enough that Scorpius had begun to wonder if he’d come at all.

“I can’t sit still,” James said flatly. “Let’s walk.”

They did. After a while—blocks, maybe half a mile, maybe it just felt that long; he could still see the bulk of the football stadium—Scorpius forced himself to speak. It was clear that James did not want to hear anything that he had to say; that James did not even want to sit at a table, and look at him sitting across it. The sight of James’s hair curling against his green scarf was unbearable, his hands eternally shoved in his coat pockets, the strong line of his nose and the red curve of his mouth. Scorpius forced himself to concentrate on the cement in front of his feet and do what he’d come here to do. It was his last chance, and it was probably still too late. Nothing in James was open to him.

“I missed you,” he said, trying to ignore the way his voice cracked. “A lot. I don’t even—well. It was a lot. And I don’t think I even get to say that, after what I did sixth year, or after what happened just now. I can be horrible. To everyone, but especially to you. So I understand if this is it. But I want you to know that I regret—everything that I did. And if I could take it back I would. I want to—try again. If you do. I miss you, all of the time, even though I keep making it all worse.”

James scrubbed a hand through his hair. Scorpius felt as close to begging as he’d ever been in his life.

Here they were: standing next to a Muggle bus stop, with crisps packets blowing around their ankles. People streamed past, clutching folded-up umbrellas under their arms with a wary eye towards the sky. Boots, scarves, fuzzy hats with soft flaps pulled down over their ears. It was the worst setting in the world for a serious conversation, but he and James had never been good at those to begin with. The street lights flickered over their heads. It was possibly the end, probably the end. The real end of James Sirius Potter and Scorpius Hyperion Doria Pamphilj Malfoy. But he wasn’t going to beg. He’d had to do this for a lot of reasons, but he could let it end with dignity. He was a Doria Pamphilj and a Malfoy and…himself. He still had his pride.

“I just.” James was looking at him, hazel eyes on navy. “I don’t ever want to feel that way again. I _can’t_.”

“Jenna’s lovely,” Scorpius’s voice said, echoing hollowly through the air between them.

James squared his shoulders, seemed to reach a decision. “She is.”

“And—”

And then James had him by the shoulders, hands warm even though the layers of coats and gloves. He touched his mouth, very lightly, against Scorpius’s. “But _you_ ,” he breathed out. “I would bloody hate you if I didn’t fucking love you so much.”

“Oh,” Scorpius managed. He felt as though there was a live animal in his chest: a niffler scrambling for gold inside of his lungs.

“Come home with me,” James ordered against his lips, sliding his hands up and down Scorpius’s arms. It felt like he was being lit on fire, and Scorpius knew more about what they felt like than most people. But this was the kind of fire he thought he’d lived his whole life to feel.

 

 

They Apparated into James’s flat without incident; Scorpius’s stomach even cooperated. It was empty, occupied only by the detritus of bachelor life: beer bottles on the table, a takeout carton from the Jade Dragon Fine Chinese.

“Want that drink?” James asked him as he unbuttoned his coat.

“Maybe later,” Scorpius answered, unable to stop looking at the strong column of James’s throat as he pulled off his scarf.

“C’mere then,” James said in a low rumble, and tugged him closer. They ended in a tangle on the living room couch, clacking teeth and pulling hair as they tried to get closer and closer. James left a bite mark on his hip, the same place as it had been in the Prefect’s bath in fourth year; Scorpius contributed scratches up and down his back. And then, very suddenly, it was slow and smooth and perfect.

 

 

Scorpius felt like his bones were made out of honey. “We should get up,” he mumbled into James’s right nipple.

“Mphm.”

“What time is Ira back?”

“Don’t care.” James stretched, a slow pull of muscles under Scorpius’s cheek. “Not moving.”

“I’m sorry,” Scorpius told him, again. He’d said it a lot of times while they were having sex but he wanted to make sure James knew. In a way, it was freeing. He’d offered James his bloody, vulnerable heart on a platter, and here they were.

“I know you are, baby.” James rubbed a hand up and down his back, fingers tracing in and out of the ridges of his spine. Then, because James would always be James, he slapped his ass.

 

 

They hadn’t moved much by the time Ira got back. Some clothes were on. James had accio-ed a bag of crisps, while they debated the merits of takeout curry vs. takeout fish and chips.

“So this is happening again?” Ira asked, taking in the state of Scorpius’s hair and James’s unbuttoned shirt.

“Yup.” James stretched again. Scorpius tried not to blush: it was probably very clear what had transpired on the shared couch.

“Cool. Knew it would happen eventually. I don’t want to see any spots of…anything on the couch. Missed you, brother.”

And that was that.

 

 

They went with fish and chips, bundling themselves down to a chippie cart a few blocks away. Scorpius found himself unable to stop looking at James: his kiss-bruised mouth, the stubble along the strong angle of his jaw. It seemed to be mutual. James would look at him and then the world would stop for a few heartbeats while he smiled with a slow-burn curve of his lips. They didn’t hold hands, quite, but they bumped shoulders unnecessarily and stood in line with their hips pressed together, an ostensible huddle against the cold December air.

“Do you know how much grease is in these things?” Scorpius asked, biting into a chip from his newsprint cone.

“Don’t care,” James responded, chucking a balled-up napkin at him.

That night James tasted, predictably, of fried fish. Scorpius was fairly sure that his own hair smelled like fry grease. Neither one of them cared.

 

 

Predictably, Scorpius woke up cold and blanketless the next morning.  At least James had had the common decency to not thieve away his pillow. He kicked him and tried to take back the comforter. James made a displeased noise and snuggled deeper into his nest.

“How do you do this every single time?” Scorpius asked him. “Every. Single. Time.”

“It’s my special magical talent,” James mumbled, yawning hugely. “Can’t all be Charms geniuses.”

“Do you want me to make some coffee?”

“Please.”

After a brief, heroic struggle with the Muggle-style stove, Scorpius managed to make a pot of coffee. James and Ira had a collection of stupid mugs with a mixture of Wizarding and Muggle messages—“Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best, since 1753,” vs. obviously-apocryphal Winston Churchill quotes—and universal chips in the rims. Choosing the two least-perilous-looking (“Coffee: do stupid things faster with more energy!” and the aforesaid ode to the never-victorious Cannons), Scorpius carefully added James’s preferred amount of milk and carried his precious haul back to the bedroom.

“Thanks, baby.” James had managed to prop himself up. “Proud of you for not turning the stove into a warthog.”

“Transfigurations are not my strong suit. Besides, we had a test in seventh year on common Muggle appliances.”

“Of course you did.”

They lay there, sipping coffee in companionable silence. It felt easy, and just…nice. Like things that people who loved each other would do: bring each other coffee, drink it in bed while contemplating the expanse of a Saturday with no meaningful commitments.

“So,” James said, bringing the fantasy of an unencumbered day in bed to an abrupt close, “my family’s stupid party is tonight.”

Scorpius hid a wince behind his mug. “Don’t feel like you need to invite me. I know things would be a little tense.”

“Bugger that.” James bumped his shoulder. “If it’s not clear enough, I could not give less of a fuck what Al or any sodding one else has to say.”

“I think you missed at least one opportunity for profanity in that sentence.”

“Must be slipping.” James pressed a slow kiss into the previously-bumped shoulder, then started making his lazy way up the side of Scorpius’s neck. He said into the skin behind Scorpius’s ear, “I know you care about Al. Al cares about you. But my brother does not get to dictate our lives. And he’ll get over it.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Scorpius managed to get out. He didn’t have so many friends that he wanted to throw away his oldest and best. But then—James.

“Life is long. He’ll forgive you. He won’t be able to help himself—who else is going to style his stupid hair for him?”

Scorpius groaned. “That’s so _very_ reassuring.”

“I have another way to reassure you,” James said, using his hand in a provocative manner that left no doubt as to the nature of the reassurance that he was offering. Scorpius squeaked, set down his coffee on the cluttered nightstand, and allowed himself to be reassured.

 

 

Post sex and post post-sex shower, they reconvened in the kitchen. Ira was scrambling eggs and making toast. “Maggie’s coming over soon. She ahh, is bringing Jenna and Martina. No phone, they had a sleepover so magic was out, couldn’t tell her not to.”

“Fuck,” announced James. Scorpius was inclined to agree.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Probably for the best,” Ira said mildly to the pan of eggs.

“Can we not get _one_ morning to ourselves?” James inquired of the universe.

“No rest for the wicked,” said Ira. “Or more like, no rest for the virtuous until they put up a Silencing Charm to keep out the sounds of the wickedness occurring across the hall.”

Scorpius felt his cheeks flame. James laughed and ruffled his hair before tugging him in for a kiss. “He’s just jealous.”

“No, as you are a revolting pig and it’s your turn to do the dishes and I am sure that Jenna will punch you in the face when you break up with her in half an hour and your looks will be ruined forever,” Ira countered.

“Fine, fine, fine,” James grumbled. “I’ll see you later, baby.” After a rather more thorough goodbye kiss, Scorpius was on his way back to the Manor, feeling lighter than he had in what felt like years. He even managed to greet his father with a modicum of cheer as he popped through the Floo.

“Where have you been all night?” his father asked suspiciously from behind the Daily Prophet.

“Around,” he responded vaguely, aware that he was unable to keep an insipid smile off his face.

“You look…pleased with yourself. Almost…happy.” The level of suspicion had increased exponentially. These were unfamiliar emotions in Malfoy Manor, almost—but not quite—as rare as spotting a centaur in the Gringotts lobby.

“Indeed.” Scorpius filled a plate with toast and fruit. Perhaps he could even bear to sit at the table and they could eat together like father and son—although, no, that was the surest way to ruin his mood.

His father heaved a sigh as he was exiting stage left. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that that damned Potter isn’t involved. Not the nice one who’s making a name for himself at Portridge, Partridge, and Persephone. Or the one in Slytherin. That…other one.”

“Er, why do you ask?”

“Scorpius, I know we don’t see eye to eye on many things, but I am not _actually_ _blind_.” His father put down the paper, and began massaging the bridge of his nose while mumbling about ways to use his son’s re-emergent deviance to prove the family’s willingness to adapt to modern times.

“Thank you for your approval?” Scorpius said cautiously.

“We’ll talk about the logistics involved with your future heir later.”

“Um, I would prefer to…not.”

Still bent over the table, his father raised one finger. “Do not push me right now.”

“O…kay.” Scorpius fled. That was quite enough father-son honesty for the day, if not for the rest of his natural life.

 

 

Later that afternoon, Scorpius was back in front of his mouthy mirror, going over himself with a critical eye. His favorite navy cashmere sweater, his single pair of jeans with an on-trend cuff, suede Oxfords—he was probably as appropriate for a Potter house party as he was going to get.

“Aren’t you going to wear a robe, dear?” his reflection asked as he pulled back his hair into a purposefully-untidy knot.

“No. Only old people and Aurors wear robes.”

“Being classic is never out of place,” his reflection responded huffily. “Although I can think of few worse fates than being an _Auror_.”

“I can think of one: being an obnoxious mirror with nothing better to do than criticize the only person who ever talks to you,” he shot back, before flouncing out of the bathroom. An oversized gray scarf and a bottle of 2007 Tenuta dell'Ornellaia Masseto he’d had Marigold fetch from the cellars completed his preparations. She’d even tied a festive ribbon with the Malfoy crest twined with serpents around it, complete with a small card of tasting notes for the uncultured Potter-Weasley palates that were soon to encounter its magnificence. No one had attention to detail like a house-elf.

Positive self-talk and the fire of righteous indignation carried him as far as James’s fireplace.

“I can’t do this,” he announced.

James, evidently prepared for last-minute reservations, shoved a rocks glass of Firewhiskey into his hand. “Yes, you can.”

He took a generous swallow. Merlin, he hated Firewhiskey. “I’m not sure.”

“If you can survive even one of your aunt’s nightmare society things, this should be easy.” James tugged him into his chest. “Just think: no one’s going to try an Unforgiveable on you,” which descended abruptly into a mumble.

“Did you just say _at least I don’t think so unless Grandmother Weasley has already been at the eggnog_?”

James gave him a blindingly white-toothed smile. “That’s why we’re going early. Lils will be thrilled to see you. And I’m an Auror now. I have an official magical license to protect you.”

“I can protect myself,” he grumbled, although the slug of Firewhiskey was starting to work its magic on the knots in his stomach.

“Do you want to Floo or take the train?” James asked, gathering up his own coat. He was familiar with Scorpius’s aversion to Apparition, after his shoes had been the recipients of some extremely undignified vomit after what should have been a simple practice hop from one end of Hogsmeade to the other.

“Train,” he answered. “I’d like to give the Firewhiskey a little more time to kick in.”

“Coward,” James said affectionately.

“How’d it go with Jenna?” he asked cautiously, as they were making their way down the stairs.

James shrugged. “Not well. No easy way to do it.”

“Did you er, tell her—?”

“That I was leaving her for a grand bisexual romance with my ex-boyfriend from school, who I had never mentioned to her the entire time we were together? Not in so many words, no.”

“I’m er, sorry you had to do that.”

“I told you before, it was going nowhere. She’s a great girl but we just weren’t ever going to work.”

“The Wizard/Muggle thing?”

“No, the _I was still massively hung up on my gay romance with my brother’s best mate_ thing,” James said drily. “And also, I hate the way she’s the slowest eater in the sodding world. You could tame a Horntail in the amount of time it takes her to eat two bites of curry.”

Scorpius smacked him. “You’re awful.”

“You’re at least as bad or we could never tolerate each other.” James grinned again, and then they were grinning at each other stupidly, and then Scorpius tripped over some uneven pavement and almost dropped the Masseto.

“In advance of any fireworks with Grandmother Weasley, thank you for that time at the lake,” he said nonsensically, after they’d made it a few more blocks. James had him by the wrist and was tugging him along the sidewalk, fighting the throng headed out from the Tube station. Evidently James’s neighborhood was hosting the Christmas block party to end all Christmas block parties. It sounded like he was muttering Muggle-repelling spells under his breath to clear a path. “When you used _Sectumsempra_ on my cousin,” he clarified pointlessly.

“Scorpius.” James stopped. A Muggle ran into him, started to swear, and backed off at the feral look on James’s face. He was reformed, but he wasn’t _that_ reformed.

“I never thanked you properly.”

“That horror show should thank me for not ripping his head off. And I do mean that literally.” He smiled slowly again, with teeth. “I look forward to the day I meet him again.”

“Hopefully tonight won’t be as…eventful.”

“It won’t. I’ll make sure of it,” James said with a certain sense of ominousness.

 

 

In the end, the party was fine. Okay, not fine. It was moderately agonizing, emotionally if not physically. Al was ignoring him, except for sending him wounded looks from across the room. The garland on the bannister had got rather out of tune, and the Celestina Warbeck Christmas Special yowling over the radio wasn’t enough to drown it out: rather, they sounded like two banshees (one with a head cold, one on helium) having a sing-off. Grandmother Weasley only tried to hex him once, but subsided back into her eggnog after a stern word from Uncle Professor Charlie Weasley, who gave him a conspiratorial wink afterwards. The veela cousins (all female, in the end) floated through the room wreaking havoc; Scorpius had to stamp on James’s foot once, rather hard, before he could get himself going about all of the _extremely important_ work he was doing as an _extremely strapping and brave_ Auror.

“We _just got back together_ , you _cannot_ hit on someone else in front of me _already_ ,” he hissed.

“I uh,” James said intelligently. “What? I wasn’t…um, never mind.”

“Look at Al,” Scorpius redirected. Two of the cousins had him cornered. He looked equal parts terrified and aroused, which was not something Scorpius had ever hoped to see on his erstwhile best friend’s face, because _obviously_.

“They’re definitely his type,” James said, coming back to himself with visible effort. “Blonde, big boobs, absolutely terrifying. Martina’s too sweet. She never stood a chance. Grandmother will be thrilled.”

“I’m very suitable,” Scorpius said primly. “I come from an excellent family.”

“Excellent family of homicidal Dark wizards, you mean.” Lily appeared over James’s shoulder and clinked their wine glasses together. “Good to see you again, Scorpius. Is this a Tenuta dell'Ornellaia Masseto? Perhaps—2006? 2007?”

“Finally, a Potter with taste!” Scorpius crowed. James had pronounced it “fine, if you like that sort of thing,” and swapped his glass for a beer of indeterminate provenance from the ice bucket under the kitchen table.

“I had some at Dahlia Greengrass’s last birthday party…absolutely divine.” She inhaled with pleasure. As usual, she looked smashing: her curly red hair was falling artistically out of an updo, and she was wearing a conservative, understated pine-green dress that had probably cost a small fortune. She looked like the anti-veela. Scorpius reflected that, if he’d been interested in women at all, he would have been very interested in Lily. Perhaps he should tell James that later, in retaliation for the veela incident.

“You two are appalling,” James said. “Wine shouldn’t taste like dirt.”

“James had some thoughts about the tasting notes,” Scorpius explained. “And it wasn’t _dirt_ , it was _a flutter of wet forest floor_.”

Lily grinned. “I’m so glad you’re back together.”

“You’re possibly the only one.”

“Nah.” Lily ran an appraising hazel eye over the crowd. “Mum and Dad like you in spite of your best efforts to the contrary; Uncle Charlie is happy there’s another obviously gay wizard in the family again; Uncle Bill doesn’t care, since he was the original marrier-of-an-unapproved-person; and Aunt Hermione would rather re-grow her original front teeth than admit to having any biases against a young wizard with such an exemplary academic record and fellow recipient of the Madame Irma Pince Award for the Graduate with the Greatest Respect for the Sacred Stacks of Our Library, so she’ll keep Uncle Ron in line. Am I missing anyone? Oh, Uncle George is for anything that destabilizes Grandmother Weasley’s world order, and no one cares what Uncle Percy thinks anyway.”

Overwhelmed by that showing of support, Scorpius hid his face in his wine as James gave his sister a spontaneous hug for the first time in possibly ever.

They left on that highest of notes, slipping past the portrait of Uncle Sirius (who gave them a lascivious wink and a thumbs-up) to the kitchen Floo connection. For once, the main party was out in the front rooms, although a generous fire roared beneath the kitchen chimney anyway and someone, probably Al, had laid out a few plates of canapés and holiday cookies.

“That wasn’t a disaster,” James said, hopping up to sit on the table next to the cookies. He nibbled on a lumpy green-frosted Christmas tree, the fire pulling the red highlights out of his hair and gilding his cheekbones. Scorpius selected a lumpy Father Christmas—Al’s baking skills had a long way to go—and leaned in between James’s knees.

“Are you forgetting the veelas so soon?” Scorpius teased, unable to stop himself from touching his lips to the dip of James’s collarbone.

James grinned down at him. “What can I say, Al isn’t the only Potter with a thing for terrifying blonds.”

Scorpius nuzzled himself deeper into James’s neck. “We aren’t even together for two days and you’re already mocking me.”

“Baby,” James said thoughtfully, tugging Scorpius’s hair out of its knot and tangling his fingers through it, “I hope I’ll be mocking you for a very, very long time.”

Scorpius blinked back up at him, navy eyes into fire-warmed hazel. “I have no plans to be mocked by anyone else. I tried and it didn't work. And I promise I’m not running away this time. No matter how hard the…mocking gets.”

The euphemism was falling apart, but he didn't think it mattered: James smiled at him, slow and careful, and Scorpius smiled back. The kiss that followed was almost an afterthought: finally, they’d said everything to each other that had to be said. Until James slapped him on the ass and said, "Don't think I'm not going to find out who tried to _mock_ my boyfriend."

 

 

Of course, touching moments—such as they were, for two fundamentally prickly young men who had more than the standard dose of British discomfort discussing feelings—were not meant to last for our intrepid heroes, so Al stumbled in shortly thereafter with one of the veela cousins to “show her how an English wizard frosts a cookie,” a phrase that Scorpius neither understood nor ever wanted to understand, especially in light of Al’s deplorable attempts at frosting Christmas trees and Father Christmases.

Which lead James to yell at him triumphantly that he was no longer the only Potter to have drunkenly cavorted (note: he used different language) with a wildly inappropriate target for his affections (also a genteel paraphrase).

This fall from grace somehow, in the bright, clear light of the morning, despite his hangover, made all of the difference to one Al Potter. Not immediately, but eventually.

You will be happy to know that, several months later on a double date in the Leaky Cauldron, Al finally apologized for trying to muck up his best friend and his brother’s love life, while Aurélie (the veela who, it turned out, was neither a cousin nor actually terrifying, except for that whole turning-into-a-bird-throwing-fire thing the first time she and Al had an argument) nodded in gracious approval. And that they all lived happily ever after.

Well, more or less—James and Scorpius would have both gotten bored with an uncomplicated _happily ever after_.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who has let me know that you enjoyed Houses and Games. It has been a long slog to get this written—you may notice that I'm posting a would-be Christmas story in February—but every time I got discouraged, I went back and read through your lovely comments. These two stupid boys have my heart and they deserved a conclusion, but y’all got me through the times where every word felt like a struggle. I cannot say how much it means to me that you have all taken the time to read, and in some cases reread, this series.
> 
> 2\. It’s been very interesting to revisit these two characters and their relationship dynamic, six (!!) years after I first started writing Houses. When I wrote Houses, I was an idiotic twenty-two-year-old bouncing from unsatisfactory relationship to miserable pining to unsatisfactory relationship. I needed to write about a profoundly fucked-up relationship somehow working out, in order to give myself hope that my own (not even nearly as, thank God) fucked-up relationships would someday work out. I wrote Gryffindor between twenty-seven and twenty-eight (like I said, long slog), while in a stable, old-married-couple relationship where we bicker over who gets to use the Xbox and invest in forever furniture. Scorpius definitely learned from some of my mistakes; but in a way, I also learned from his.


End file.
